A federal judge from the District of Montana has dismissed a Title IX case with prejudice, ordering each party to bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees.
The district court issued the ruling after the litigation, which pitted Coach Bennett MacIntyre v. Carroll College, was remanded to the district court last winter by the 9Th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the panel of circuit judges reversed a previous district court ruling, which granted summary judgment to Carroll College.
Central to the panel’s finding was its belief that the non-renewal of an employment contract can “deter a reasonable employee from reporting discrimination” and that “employment actions can be adverse for retaliation claims even if they relate to purely discretionary decisions.”
MacIntyre is currently listed as the head coach on the college’s website.
By way of background, MacIntyre was the head coach for both the men’s and women’s golf teams at Carroll College. During his tenure, he spoke to school officials about what he perceived to be gender inequity within the college’s athletic department. The college allegedly refused to renew his contract.
In 2021, the district court granted Carroll College’s motion for summary judgment, finding that MacIntyre did not allege a prima facie case of retaliation. That ruling was appealed.
The panel noted that for a plaintiff to allege a prima facie case of a retaliation claim related to Title IX, they must do so by satisfying three elements: “(1) plaintiff was engaged in [a] protected activity; (2) plaintiff suffered an adverse action; and (3) a causal link between the first two elements.”
Carroll College employed MacIntyre from 2006 to 2018. He first served as a community living director, then later he became an associate athletics director while serving as the head coach for the men’s and women’s golf teams until 2016 when he stepped into the role of head coach full time.
MacIntyre guided Carroll to several successes, including recently leading the women and the men to a fourth-place finish and a fifth-place finish, respectively, in the 2019 Conference Championship.
According to the factual background from the appellate case, MacIntyre filed his employee self-evaluation that he stated aimed to “assist Carroll Athletics in becoming Title IX compliant.”
A few months later in January of the following year, the head coach spoke to the Title IX coordinator about the topic and alleged workplace harassment, hostile work environment, and discrimination. MacIntyre made those allegations saying they involved the Interim Director of Athletics, Kyle Baker, and the President of the college, Tom Evans.
When Baker submitted his performance review of MacIntyre, he gave him the lowest possible scores prompting the head coach to file a formal grievance with some of those allegations.
The grievance was settled when the school agreed to “(1) remove Baker’s negative review from MacIntyre’s file, (2) pay MacIntyre $15,000 in back pay, (3) and hire MacIntyre as a full-time golf coach under a two-year employment contract.”
MacIntyre signed the contract, which was effective from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018. After the stated term was up, Carroll College did not renew the contract. According to the case, the school said that the lack of renewal was due to budget cuts. The case further elaborates that Lori Peterson, Vice President of Finance, Administration and Facilities, emailed the athletic director at the time, Charlie Gross, asking whether they needed a head coach for golf or if it was a stipend position.
The school switched the golf head coach to a stipend role and MacIntyre’s pay subsequently decreased.
In June 2018, MacIntyre then filed another grievance regarding Title IX violations that launched the current judicial process between these two parties.
The district court granted the summary judgment in 2021 because it believed “no reasonable person would conclude from the record before the Court that non-renewal of the written, fixed-term contract, which, by its terms, expired after having been performed in compliance with its terms, constituted actionable adverse action.”
However, the appellate court found that the district court incorrectly concluded that the lack of renewal did not provide enough evidence to formulate a prima facie case for Title IX. The appellate court ruled that although Carroll College was not legally obligated to offer the contract renewal to MacIntyre, its decision not to, according to the appellate opinion, “may be an adverse action because it is ‘reasonably likely to deter employees from engaging in protected activity.’” Ray v. Henderson, 217 F.3d 1234, 1237 (9th Cir. 2000).
With that in mind, the appellate court remanded the case to the district court, leading to the joint dismissal.
